DAY 7

Image by Rob Zweers

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Quails

A GREETING
Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.
Let your nurturing Spirit guide me
on a safe and level path.
(Psalm 143:10)

A READING
Now the Spirit went out from God and drove quail in from the west, and they alighted all over the camp as far as a day’s walk in any direction, in piles three feet thick. All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than about sixty bushels.
(Numbers 11:31-32)

MUSIC


A MEDITATIVE VERSE
They demanded food, and God sent them quail
and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.
(Psalm 105:41)

A REFLECTION
In spite of all the talk about the law of tooth and fang and the struggle for survival, there is in the lives of the animals and birds a great peacefulness. It is not all fear and flight, pursuit and killing. That is part of it, certainly; and there is cold and hunger; there is the likelihood that death, when it comes, will be violent. But there is peace, too, and I think that the intervals of peace are frequent and prolonged. These are the times when the creature rests, communes with himself or with his kind, takes pleasure in being alive...I have seen the same peacefulness in a flock of wood ducks perched above the water in the branches of a fallen beech, preening and dozing in the sunlight of an autumn afternoon. Even while they dozed they had about them the exquisite alertness of wild things. If I had shown myself they would have been instantly in the air. But for the time there was no alarm among them, and no fear. The moment was whole in itself, satisfying to them and to me.
- from The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

VERSE OF THE DAY
We are free like a bird from the trap!
The snare has been broken and we are free!
(Psalm 124:7)

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Drawing of a corn crake, by Johann Friedrich Naumann (1899)
for his Natural History of Birds in Northern Europe. 
"Corn crake" is the word used instead of "quail" in some translations of 
Exodus and Numbers. The corn crake is on the red list in the UK.

The second half of these devotions will turn to birds who are not stigmatized by scripture but instead play a life-giving role in the biblical story or have become symbols of divine life. At the same time, we will see how much these same birds are vulnerable, threatened or nearing extinction in our own time. This week we will also feature the writing of Wendell Berry, the American poet farmer and environmental activist who died last week.

There is no specific mention of quails in the Levitical and Deuteronomic prescriptions about birds as either clean or unclean. God's provision of quails as food for those wandering in the wilderness is slightly different in the two accounts of the feeding: in Exodus the quails are linked with the appearance of manna and are a manifestation of God's abundance. In the Numbers account, they are summoned from the sea.

In our own time, quails migrate by the thousands from Europe to Africa where they are then trapped by hunters in huge nets spread along the edges of the Mediterranean as they arrive, exhausted. The nets used are fishing nets, erected along sand dunes. Fishing nets are a biblical symbol of plenty promised by Jesus. How does their use this way challenge our sense of abundant life?

Many of the world's species of quails are critically endangered, verging on extinction or actually extinct. Most famous among these is the Himalayan Quail, last seen in the western Himalayas in India almost 150 years ago. The Manipur Bush-Quail, another Indian species, dwells in the grasslands of the northeast and is rarely seen, as its habitat undergoes climate change-created drought. Scientists are trying to reintroduce the Masked Bobwhite Quail to Arizona after that species succumbed to drought in Mexico.

Our biblical stories are marked by ritual mistreatment of animals, including birds. But do our own contemporary stories have to be? In the spirit of today's music, how can we change the narrative of our time to become one in which we all thrive?

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Scripture passages are taken from The Inclusive Bible.

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LC† The Winged Word is a devotional series of Lutherans Connect, supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Centre for Spirituality and Media at Martin Luther University College. To receive the devotions by email, write to lutheransconnect@gmail.com. The devotional pages are written and curated by Deacon Sherry Coman, with support and input from Pastor Steve Hoffard, Catherine Evenden and Henriette Thompson. Join us on Facebook. Lutherans Connect invites you to make a donation to the Ministry by going to this link on the website of the ELCIC Eastern Synod and selecting "Lutherans Connect Devotionals" under "Fund". Devotions are always freely offered, however your donations help support the ongoing work. 
Thank you and peace be with you!

DAY 1

Image by Mary Ellen St. John

Ravens

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A GREETING
The earth and everything on it—
the world and all who live in it—
belong to you, O God.
(Psalm 24:1)

A READING
At the end of forty days Noah opened the porthole he had made in the ark and sent out a raven. It would fly off and return to him as the waters were drying up from the earth.
(Genesis 8:6-7)

MUSIC


A MEDITATIVE VERSE
The ravens brought him bread and meat every morning and evening, and he drank from the stream.
(1 Kings 17:6)

A SONG LYRIC
Walk through the world with care, my love,
And sing the things you see.
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow.
And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding,
Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing.
Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker,
Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker.
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus.
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home.
- from The Lost Words Blessing, written by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux, and Kerry Andrew. Lyrics found on thebirdsings.com

VERSE OF THE DAY
I could fly away with wings made of dawn,
or make my home on the far side of the sea,
but even there your hand will guide me,
your mighty hand holding me fast.
(Psalm 139:9-10)

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"The Raven and the First Men," by Haida artist Iljuwas Bill Reid (1980)
with the assistance of Reg Davidson, Guujaaw, Jim Hart, George Norris and George Rammell. In Haida story, Raven finds the first humans when he opens a clamshell. Image found on the website of Art Canada Institute.

"Walk through the world with care my love."
The lyric that opens "The Lost Words Blessing" invites us into the Season of Creation, a time of deepening our awareness of the crises affecting our planet and all its creatures, while also renewing our commitment to its wellbeing and restoration. As we become mesmerized by watching artist Jackie Morris draw a raven, how can each brushstroke draw us deeper into a meditation on the beauty of birds? Over the next days, we will focus on that beauty and also on how we keep vigil for the birds whose numbers are in great decline. We will consider both the bird species that are vanishing and the work being done by some conservators to try to preserve, nurture and sustain them. Artists also carry this passion - creativity is at the heart of God's work and can inspire our own action.

"The Lost Words Blessing" was created by the Spell Songs collective, a group of musicians inspired by The Lost Words, a collection of poetry and illustrations by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris celebrating words that were dropped from an update to a children’s dictionary in the UK. (They have since been restored.) Many of the "lost words" described creatures and plants and the musicians adapted them into songs. "The Lost Words Blessing" names the lark, the heron and the raven among those birds who deserve to be always in our living vocabulary and memory. The song also carries much more: it holds the grief we all have about the disappearance and/or extinction of species that once thrived, as well as the hope that abides even at the very heart of grief. This year MacFarlane and Morris released a new work, "The Book of Birds: A Field Guide", which has been part of the inspiration for this devotional series.

The first bird that Noah sends out is the raven. Even before the dove, the raven is the brave voyager, the first creature allowed to leave captivity on the ark and to be itself. The raven is profound in Indigenous storytelling, associated with Creator and with many Indigenous origin stories.

Over these days, we will consider and celebrate some bird species that are currently imperiled. We will also follow the way in which birds were characterized, demonized, banished and also ritually killed in scripture and how that thinking continues today, long after the biblical days of suspicion and sacrifice.

The song asks us to let the raven call us home when our hope is gone. How can all birds help call us home to the Christ that dwells in the created world? How does being called home, call us also to action?

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Ravens mate for life and also use synchronized acrobatics as a way of playing and strengthening their bond to each other. How much can we relate to this in our lives and partnerships? And how can it help us think about our commitment to care of creation?



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Scripture passages are taken from The Inclusive Bible.

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LC† The Winged Word is a devotional series of Lutherans Connect, supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Centre for Spirituality and Media at Martin Luther University College. To receive the devotions by email, write to lutheransconnect@gmail.com. The devotional pages are written and curated by Deacon Sherry Coman, with support and input from Pastor Steve Hoffard, Catherine Evenden and Henriette Thompson. Join us on Facebook. Lutherans Connect invites you to make a donation to the Ministry by going to this link on the website of the ELCIC Eastern Synod and selecting "Lutherans Connect Devotionals" under "Fund". Devotions are always freely offered, however your donations help support the ongoing work. 
Thank you and peace be with you!